Tuesday, July 19, 2011

All Grain Brewing System

This weekend I drove to Salem to take a look at an all grain brewing system from craigslist.  When I arrived at the storage center and the guy opened the door I was amazed at what I saw.  The culmination of what looked like a decade of brewing equipment.  What really attracted me to this setup is that it had a 15 gallon capacity which meant that I could brew 15 gallons and use three different yeasts on the same wort.  Producing three very different beers, depending on the yeast strains.
With this all grain setup I can produce higher quality, lower cost beers.  The trade-off is that I will have to surrender an entire day to brewing instead of the usual 4 hours and the chance of the beer coming out ruined is higher.  There is far more things to screw up in all grain brewing as well as smaller margins for error.

The system contained the following items:
  • 1 x brewing tower
    • 1 x hot liquor tank
    • 1 x mash/lautertun with False Bottom
    • 1 x kettle with false bottom and stainless heat exchanger for cooling wort
    • 1 x large propane tank
  • 2 x 5 gallon cornelius kegs
  • 1 x 2.5 gallon cornelius keg
  • 2 x 6 gallon buckets of 2-row malted barley
  • 1 x 18 gallon plastic conical fermenter
  • 3 x decent to cheap hydrometers
  • 1 x nice hydrometer with internal thermometer
  • 1 x 25 lb. CO2 Tank
  • 2 x complete (gas side) cornelius keg lines with manifolds (one 3-line and one 4-line)
  • 4 x 6 gallon car boys
  • 1 x copper cooling coil
  • 1 x wort pump
  • 1 x grain mill pretty nice one that can be drill operated.
  • Lots of little extras: Airlocks, tubes, siphons, spoons, scale, grain bags etc. 
Total Cost: $ 1200.00 
Total Value: Priceless
Total Cliche's used: 1

This is the best picture I have right now but there will be many more to follow during future brew sessions.

1 comment:

  1. It looks like a clumsy person (me) could trip and knock the whole thing over.

    ReplyDelete

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